Twin 3-Year-Old Sisters Are Found Dead Inside Hot Car in Backyard of Georgia Home

Police in Georgia are searching for answers after twin 3-year-old girls were found dead Sunday afternoon inside a car.

The car in which Raelynn and Payton Keyes were discovered was in the backyard of a Hinesville home that wasn’t where the girls lived, police said, according to Fox5 and KATV.

But Captain Tracey Howard of the Hinesville Police Department told WOTC the girls often spent time at the home.

Howard said before their death, the girls had been living in a foster home with their foster parents and two siblings for a year and a half. Howard added the foster parents and homeowners where the girls were found had some connection, but it was unclear what that relationship was.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Howard said the girls were last seen when a caregiver put them to bed, and it wasn’t clear how they ended up in the car.

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An autopsy found the girls had died of heat stroke, WDHN reports.

First responders reported the temperature to be 92 degrees Fahrenheit when the girls were found.

The girls’ biological mother, Skye Keyes, called Payton and Raelynn a “double-blessing.”

“This whole thing is devastating,” Keyes says. “We have already lost one daughter in 2014 and six months after she passed we found out we were having our girls. We got double the blessing and now they’re gone, due to someone else’s negligence. We have two sons to stay strong for but feel like our world has been ripped apart.”

She continued, “Losing a child is the worst possible thing you could ever go through.”

The Hinesville Police Department told WDHN the girls’ deaths are still under investigation.

A GoFundMe page has been started by the girls’ aunt to help pay for their headstones.